Friday, October 14, 2016

FOIA emails -- Haiti

Newly released emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by the Republican National Committee reveal very open special treatment of "Friends of Bill" ("FOB") by the State Department in granting access to recovery efforts in Haiti.

$10 billion in emergency aid was spent after the 2010 earthquake.

There was close coordination between Caitlin Klevorick, a senior State Department official, and Amitabh Desai, the director of foreign policy for the Clinton Foundation.They exchanged emails from Clinton Foundation donors looking to participate in the Haiti recovery efforts.

Some were looking to capture their "fair share" of $10 billion in emergency aid contracts doled out by the U.S. government.

The State Department was very clearly asking for 'Friends of Bill' to be flagged for special consideration.

“Need you to flag when people are friends of WJC,” “Most I can probably ID but not all.”, wrote Caitlin Klevorick, then a senior State Department official who was juggling incoming offers of assistance being funneled to the State Department by the Clinton Foundation.

Bill Clinton had told CBS's Charlie Rose last month: "nothing was ever done for anybody because they were contributors to the foundation, nothing."

In another Klevorick and Dasai exchange, the State Department official asks: “Is this a FOB!" (friend of Bill Clinton)

"If not, she should go to cidi.org" (a general government website to get involved in Haiti)

Desai forwarded a note to Klevorick from Garry Mauro, who served twice as the Texas state chairman for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, and has donated $25,000 to $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

The offer was for “major assets in Haiti” from a company called DRC Emergency Services.

On its website, the company boasts of having performed emergency response work at disasters around the globe, with over $2 billion in disaster response contracts.

The company’s website states:“Within 24 hours of the (Haiti) earthquake’s occurrence, DRC assembled and mobilized a team of highly experienced and dedicated personnel to Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas.”